Violence continued to rock parts of Bengal for the fourth consecutive day on Wednesday even as the members of rival political parties fought each other with bombs, guns, sticks and whatever weaponry they could lay their hands on in their urgency to file nomination forms for the forthcoming panchayat elections.
This, even as the State Election Commission led by a newly-appointed Commissioner Rajiva Sinha and the State Police sat a silent spectator, the Opposition parties said, alleging goons of the ruling Trinamool Congress who were preventing the Opposition candidates to file their nominations were the real culprits. Reports of battlefield-like clashes came throughout the day from Bhangar, a semi-urban area east of Kolkata, Canning, another flashpoint some 50 km south of the State Capital, Birbhum, Bankura and various other places.
Thursday is the last date for filing nominations. In Bhangar activists of Left-backed Indian Secular Front and TMC fought each other by hurling scores of bombs throughout the day as the villagers remained indoors. Canning a port-town, too, burnt with the TMC and BJP fighting each other with bombs and lathis, leaving a number of people injured. Both the areas are in South 24 Parganas.
Similar situations were seen at Indas area of Bankura where BJP activists clashed with the TMC supporters outside the nomination filing centre.
Dozens of policemen and many political workers were injured in the clashes, sources said. "If the situation is like this during the filing of nomination then what it will be like on the voting day … but we are also prepared … this time if the police do not take any action then we will make the people resist with whatever means they have," said CPI(M) general secretary Md Salim.
Meanwhile, Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari who met the SEC on Wednesday noon threatened to gherao the Election Commission until his party candidates were allowed to file their nominations.
"We are bringing our nominees who have been prevented by the TMC goons from filing their nominations in their respective blocks … we have brought many of them from Basirhat … I appeal to other political parties too to come here with their nominees and gherao the SEC office until they are allowed to file their nominations … this Commissioner is a stooge of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee … he is a slave of the TMC and will put us in all kind of troubles … but we will not allow him to get away with defying the High Court order asking for setting up a grievance cell at the State Commission office … This fight will go a great distance … we will not allow Mamata Banerjee to win most seats uncontested as she did in 2013 and 2018," Adhikari said.